Author: Ari Paul

Ari Paul is a journalist in New York City and has covered politics for the Nation, the Guardian, the Brooklyn Rail, VICE News, the New York Observer, Jacobin, In These Times, the Forward, Al Jazeera America and many other outlets.

Mike Elk, the labor reporter for Politico, is under fire. It’s not for any story in particular. It’s about who he is. Elk, a prominent labor journalist from a union family who was formerly with In These Times, is trying to organize the staff at the Beltway news organization. (More…)

Since protests erupted in Ferguson, in response to the killing of Michael Brown, America’s attention has turned to the militarization of domestic police. The guns, tanks and armor have concerned even moderates, raising questions about ignited tensions, reducing trust of law enforcement and even violating the essence of the Posse Comitatus Act, meant to restrict the military’s ability to police the public. (More…)

Rolling Stone may very well lose some of the honor it’s earned over the decades. From Annie Leibovitz’s photography to Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism to Michael Hastings’s story that brought down a top US general in Afghanistan, the publication has commanded a presence not just in the world of magazines, but in Americana at large. (More…)

I have to admit, I hadn’t heard of Ferguson, Missouri until this week. And yet, here it is, laid out in international media. It started with an unarmed young black man, Michael Brown, shot and killed by a police officer the hacking collective Anonymous has identified as Bryan Willman (though this hasn’t been confirmed.) The community, mostly black, responded in outrage and sadness, creating a new protest sign—their arms in the air. (More…)

Larry Gordon assured me that it was all a big misunderstanding. Sure, his Long Island newspaper, the 5 Towns Jewish Times, printed an article by his son and staffer, Yochanan, titled “When Genocide Is Permissible.” In considering how Israel can protect itself from rocket fire the author ponders the unthinkable, and while the paper officially apologized, Gordon insisted that the outraged public got it wrong. (More…)

As the death toll mounts in Gaza and images of the carnage spill onto our computer screens, anti-war Jews are bombarded with accusations of betrayal, acquiescing to global anti-Semitism and blaming oneself. It’s not the first time violence between Israel and the Palestinians has pitted Jew against Jew. But Operation Protective Edge shows how blind devotion to Israel, for many, trumps all other Jewish concerns. (More…)

After each needless slaughter in an American city or town by a lunatic who had easy, legal access to firearms, liberals find themselves creating a whole host of narratives to explain the gun culture that makes the United States stand out among industrialized nations for its epidemic of gun violence. (More…)

In cities across the US, the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, from $7.25, is picking up steam. It’s already been mandated in the small airport burg of SeaTac, outside Seattle, and Seattle itself has enacted its own wage increase, although one with caveats that critics fear are too partial to business. (More…)

One morning in May of 2007, I entered onto a Manhattan subway platform, fearing I’d just made a bad decision. I’d just accepted a job at a local newspaper that covers labor, and a part of my beat covered transit workers. It wasn’t just because I was leaving a comfortable research gig at a union to “follow my dream” of journalism, but because I wondered if I had overestimated the importance of the stories I’d be working on. (More…)

In cities across the US, images of the Occupy Wall Street protests are filled with batons, tear gas and riot gear. These have become the symbols of state reaction. Scruffy anarchists tied in plastic bracelets corralled into buses. Women in tears from pepper spray. Bloody faces. (More…)

Computer scientist Hal Berghel once said of American judicial oversight of government surveillance, “While this might not meet the strict definition of a kangaroo court, it seems to fall within the marsupial family.” The same could be said for the ordeal of 25-year-old graduate student (More…)

A U.S. Supreme Court decision set to come out this summer could decide the fate of the nation’s public sector unions, and judging by the temperament of the court’s conservative five-member majority, it looks as if labor is bracing for a powerful punch to the gut. The court’s acceptance of the idea of that money is tantamount to speech means that a decision in Harris v. Quinn could mean the end of the “closed shop” in government employment. (More…)